Entertainment

Eureka Science News says Who Needs Human Editors?

A new news aggregator called Eureka Science News is officially launching later on tonight. It's been a while since we heard from an aggregation site that didn't have a user-generated aspect to its curating process, but that's exactly how Eureka works.

Instead of looking to users and readers, Eureka has its own AI algorithm that deems which news is recent, relevant and the most important. Eureka tags and organizes all its featured news content, and presents it in a manner that allows the user to simply choose a category and begin perusing through the news.

Outside of bookmarking or emailing stories, there really aren't any social elements to Eureka right now, but there will be a few interactive options in the future. Once Eureka reaches a certain audience level, the plan is to incorporate features like commenting for individual articles. The launching of Eureka Science News emphasizes the divide between user-driven ranking processes and algorithmic processes that attempt to do the job of a knowledgeable editor.

Even though we've seen a trend moving towards the combining of these two camps, we still have a long way to go. Human editing, especially in the interactive sense, is picking up steam from sites like Mahalo, despite early hesitation from some in the early adopter crowd. Eureka is a rather niche site, being focused on science news, but it will be interesting to see such a service grow from here.

With Eureka's plans to add a bit of social interaction, and having seen the route traditional media has had to take with its online offerings, it's clear that a main source of success from combo content aggregators and recommendation tools comes from the ability to engage users through participation.

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